How do I set up the portfolio template in Skylark theme?
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I am trying to use the Skylark customized theme mainly for a website, not as a blog and I am having a hard time figuring out what really is the main portion of my site, which is my portfolio of work.
I thought I understood how to do it after having set up the “Showcase” slide on the home page but I guess I don’t. I have three sections of work that would be accessible under the top nav “Portfolio” link: jewelery, vessels and flatwear. Each one has about 20 images.
Where exactly do I set up these? Are they “pages” with portfolio template spec’ed for each one? Or are they “posts” one for each item? And if so, how do they get sorted when someone clicks on the nav?
Please don’t direct me to the …themes/skylark page because that doesn’t explain fully how to set it up. Thank you in advance.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hello Nancy,
Thanks for getting in touch. :)
Let me explain first a little bit on the structure of the site, bear with me if these are all things you already know. :)
The menu you see on top is configured in Appearance > Menu. As you can see by opening that page, all the entries in the menu are mapped to Pages.
This leads us to the Pages part, under the Pages item in the sidebar. There you create the pages that then are accessible from the menu. You have already configured all of them, so that’s fine. And all of them are using the “Portfolio” template.
How that template works depends on how the theme is configured. As you’ve read in the documentation:
http://theme.wordpress.com/themes/skylark/“To add a post to the Portfolio page template, create or edit a post with the image, video, or gallery post format, and assign it featured image that’s at least 280 pixels wide.”
That’s probably what’s not very clear, and well, I acknowledge it is a bit confusing. You’re right.
To add items on the Portfolio page you have to mark that item as either one of the three formats “Image”, “Gallery” or “Video” from the sidebar in any post. If you open a post in the right column you see the “Format” block just above “Categories”.
Unfortunately, the way the theme Skylark is configured, it means you can have just one and only one Portfolio-type page on the site. This means that everything marked as “Image”, “Gallery” or “Video” will appear on every page that uses the Portfolio page template.
I guess that’s not what you meant to, unfortunately. It’s a limitation of Skylark.
What you could try to do is either:
1. Find a different theme that suits your needs
2. Try with the Gallery feature: http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/gallery/I’m sorry for this setback, let me know if I can help further. :)
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Hi: Thank you for the info/reply. So tell me if I’m understanding what you’re saying. If all the work appears on one portfolio page, then whether a person clicks on jewelry or vessels they would see them all on one page. If that’s correct, yes that’s a problem. Is there no way to change this using the CSS customization?
Also, is there a limit on the number of items that can be put in the portfolio page?
Unfortunately I think I’ve invested too much time in customizing the Skylark theme to switch at this point, and I like how it’s working otherwise. So how does the Gallery feature differ from the Portfolio?
I do wish the descriptions of these page features were clearer. One idea would be to let people see the back end set up on the Live demos. That would help a lot.
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Hello Nancy,
You’re correct, that’s how the theme is built, it’s not something that can be changed via CSS. Every theme manage its features in different ways, and specifically Skylark has this way of managing the portfolio. It makes easier to add stuff to it (you just have to check a single flag) but that limits the content to a single page.
The gallery feature is part of the native WordPress and not a feature of the theme itself like Portfolio. It works by using images instead of posts. You can see an example on the page I linked, that contains also the instructions on how to use it:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/images/gallery/It provides a way to arrange photos in a single post. The upside is that you get a great flexibility and you can use them in any post. The downside is that you are limited to images only, not posts or pages. I think the best way to see if it works for you would be to take one of your pages and try it out.
You’re absolutely right about providing more tools to preview Live Demos, that’s a good advice. We’ll look into it. :)
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